


I'm Going, You Can Come

by Devilc



Category: My Beautiful Laundrette
Genre: Character of Color, Gen, Muslim Character, POV Character of Color
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-09
Updated: 2010-03-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 20:16:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devilc/pseuds/Devilc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How did Tania end up on that train platform?</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Going, You Can Come

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [](http://eid-ka-chand.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**eid_ka_chand**](http://eid-ka-chand.dreamwidth.org/) fic challenge. Offered in loving memory of the stories my mother told about her first Eid with her wonderful host family -- she was terribly homesick and they were so incredibly loving and kind to her.

It's a clip from a BBC TV documentary about catastrophic urban fires from Rome to the present day that finally makes up Tania's mind.

During this July past, wildfires on a scale almost unimaginable to anybody in the UK raged through communities in the hills in and around Los Angeles, California -- the hills, and brush, and names like "Ojai" and "Baldwin Hills" are news to Tania, because when she thinks of Southern California, it's beaches, and palm trees, and Hollywood, and stars on the walk of fame -- and in a clip from LA TV news, this woman, shaking, barely keeping the tears and screams back behind the veneer of dignity and manners, tells the reporter how the Sheriff's Deputies just knocked on her door a few minutes ago and told her she had five minutes to get packed and get out. Behind her, the hills are washed in lurid orange flame and the wind-driven smoke that swirls around them looks almost like fog.

Five minutes. Tania rolls the notion around in her mind for days after seeing the show. Five minutes to decide what comes with and what stays and is left behind ... forever. Five minutes to plan the start of the rest of your life.

Five minutes is all she's going to get, Tania realizes one cool and rainy Sunday morning as she sits at her vanity and styles her hair for the luncheon her father has planned. Any more than five minutes, and one of her sisters will find out (and they won't keep the secret), or her mum will wander in, wanting help with something, or it will be one of her endless stream of aunties who comes through her door.

(Oh please, please, please don't let it be Cherry who finds out.)

She says almost nothing during the meal, which is completely awful by the way, because her mother and her father still aren't talking. Well, more like her mum isn't talking to her father or having anything to do with him, and everybody who knows _why_ carries on as if the affair with Rachel never happened. It's like they're all playing a game of make believe as they gather 'round the table, only it's a lot less fun than when they were children. The fantasy is a lot more tawdry for starters and the mood is ... mercenary at best.

It's driving Tania insane, all this pretending, all this make believe.

As soon as she can, she runs for the lavatory and splashes some water on her face to rinse away the tears she lets fall only after she's clicked the lock. "I'm going," she whispers to the red-eyed woman in the mirror. "You can come."

~oo(0)oo~

Marriage to Omar looms on the horizon like the flames on those hills as the days pass. Once ominous yet distant, now entirely too close for Tania's liking, Tania's life, _Tania's sanity_.

(She's not going to end up on the train tracks like Omar's mum ... the auntie they never speak of. And she's not going to end up like her mum. Or, worse yet, like Cherry. Not Cherry. Never Cherry.)

The time has come.

Tania throws the closet open and her hand closes around the leather handle of her suitcase -- one she got in Lahore a few years back -- she's an old pro at packing for Holiday, and this is everything and nothing like that.

It takes five minutes to pack the essentials.

And a lifetime to regret all she's about to leave behind.

(No. That's not going to happen. It's not.)

At least she's got a goodly amount of real gold and real pearls to hock if it comes to that. If she economizes, Tania figures she can make it for at least a quarter year if there are any delays in getting Uni sorted.

~oo(0)oo~

~~Once upon a time~~ Not so long ago, really, the idea of marrying Omar seemed like freedom. Once upon a time, not so very long ago, Tania _liked_ Omar enough that she might come to love him because she thought he wasn't like the others.

But now?

He's turned out just like the rest of them.

Except for Johnny.

And when Tania twigged on to Johnny, she thought at first it might not be that bad, sharing Omar with him. She quite likes Johnny, there's something quite cheeky about him, and they get on well. Given how he's acted since he found out that Omar intended to marry her, Johnny doesn't seem to mind the idea of sharing Omar with her, and ... unless she got it _completely_ back to front, Johnny seems to fancy her, too.

But, if Tania goes along with it _now_? Why she'd just be living off of a man, and, like she said to Rachel, she doesn't like women who live off men.

(Women like Rachel, Cherry, her aunties, her mum, her sisters ... _herself_.)

(Because, _damn her_, Rachel got that right.)

Tania plants a fierce knee on the top of her bulging suitcase to force it shut, and with a loud _zrrrrip_, a sound that seems to echo like an alarm, or a creaky floorboard when you're trying to sneak around late at night, she gets the zipper all the way 'round.

Donning her coat and scarf, she crams a few last things in her book bag, grabs her purse and pauses a moment in the doorway, sucking in a deep breath. Her mother, her aunties, her sisters ... she's going to miss them terribly.

(Heh. Homesick already and she's not even out the door. Pathetic.)

"It's now or never, girl," Tania whispers under her breath. It's take that next step, or not. The flames are here. She can try to outrun them, or stay and be consumed.

There.

(The door clicks shut behind her.)

Done.

She tosses a lock of hair out of her eyes. She's got a train to catch. A quick glance at her watch shows there's enough time to pop in at the laundrette and see if she can't talk to Johnny and get him to come with.

(Johnny's going to find himself in a world of hurt and trouble and likely get his heart broken in the bargain if he doesn't get out now, like her.)

But, no matter what he says, Tania Hussein's got a train to catch, one that's going to take her into a brave new world.

One where she makes her own way, thank you very much.


End file.
